Microsoft does say it is up to the hardware manufacturer to make the decision, which sticks the hardware manufacturer with the legal problem of anti trust legal action for anti-competitive policies. This could get real interesting in the future.

Oh yes, you can build a rescue disk with Windows 8 Pro. If you have regular Windows 8 then cost is 70 US dollars. However, if you are upgrading from an older version of Windows, the cost is 40 US dollars. A very interesting marketing approach, we gotcha, so pay.

Nooby, I missed your question on USB flash drive boots. I have not tested it, but, it should be possible. One would have to set legacy mode in the BIOS and then ensure the USB drive was before the hard disk in the boot sequence.

Flash, it appears that one would have to do a "legacy boot" for the CD. If the boot loader on the CD is not registered in the database, then it is look upon as malware and should not be run. Ah, all in the interest of security._________________Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

In the UEFI setup you can disable secure boot and Windows 8 will boot just fine. The secure boot problem is overcome by shim/mokmanager which lets you add your own trusted keys to UEFI. But mokmanager isn't user friendly at all. The one that the Linux Foundation is working on sounds a lot easier to use, but they were having some problem getting it signed by Microsoft. I'm sure they'll get it pretty soon.
The Real problems are the ESP with Windows hibernated problem if using a hard drive install. And trying to change your boot order or boot device in order to boot from flash or optical. The UEFI setups are not at all uniform. I can't test optical booting, this new laptop doesn't have an optical drive. On this new laptop I can disable secure boot and then enable legacy mode. Then I can choose which device to boot from easily. I can do it in normal UEFI mode, (and I have done it) but it's not user friendly at all. If you kind of know what you're doing it's not too bad.

Before the most recent updates to this Compaq,one enabled legacy boot (which disabled uefi secure boot), entered a four digit code to complete the operation and legacy boot started in the order of bios boot device listing.

I decided to try FatDog 6.1.1 on the Compaq in legacy to see how it would work. One of the more recent updates, changed the UEFI programs. I enabled legacy boot with the internal CDROM first device and entered the four digit code. Nothing happen for a while and then Windows 8 started up. Restarted and back to BIOS setup to check to see legacy boot was enabled. Yes it was. Next restart, I found I needed to use the boot device option and selected CDROM to get FatDog. FatDog CDROM booted up fine and worked nicely. I used it to copy the EFI partition data.

I also tried after a restart to use boot device to boot the hard drive and it failed. One just has to wait for Windows 8 to start up with the legacy boot option. I have UEFI secure boot enabled now for Windows 8.

I also found out from HP support the particular model I have is a "business computer" and not a general consumer model. It has different BIOS features. The funny thing is I brought it at Walmart, a mass consumer distributor. The support gentleman was surprised and thanked me for telling him about where I purchased the computer.

I will be replacing the hard drive in the future. The new solid state drive has four partitions, first is a Fat32 for the needed efi boot partition and three regular EXT2 Linux partitions. I will be trying out FatDog64 on the new drive with a full standard partition installation. The prices for 64 Gigabyte solid state drives have dropped._________________Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

I find it likely that they have one policy for professional users
and another for the average user.

they trust that the professional user wants to be able to test
otehr OS and then allow that to be possible through change
how it boots up

while they don't want the average user to have that privilege?

So depending on the model you have almost no way to know
if the retailer did happen to buy the professional unless they write
that explicitly as a known version them bought to be that flexible???

to average user it would be like lottery to buy if the seller are not
well informed to know if they got the right version by delivery?_________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

I've just quickly read this thread with interest, as i have a circa 2007-8 Intel Mac that i wanted to partition and be able to run Puppy on. OSX doesn't permit resizing partitions, one must format, choose partitions and reinstall.

I came across rEFIt and successfully installed it, so i now have a graphical interface from which to choose what i wish to boot on that machine - OSX, Linux or CDROM..

rEFIt is a boot menu and maintenance toolkit for EFI-based machines like the Intel Macs. You can use it to boot multiple operating systems easily, including triple-boot setups with Boot Camp. It also provides an easy way to enter and explore the EFI pre-boot environment.

The reason i'm posting is that i see Window$ mentioned on the above site as well, however i can't say whether or not this utility would work with UEFI, Win8 and its contemptible idiosyncrasies....i hope it does provide some options._________________This aging business really bugs me - it didn't bother me years ago, so why is it happening now??meownplanet - puppylinuxstuff

when Ms came up with UEFI they wanted to make it fool proof
so they would not allow that program for Apple computers to work
and thus one need to have the certified keys and they cost a lot
of money. Thousands of dollars? So maybe Red Hat Linux+
would pay for it and maybe Ubuntu too?

But i doubt that us using small linux would be able to so we have
to use the allowed way to shut it off or whatever it is named.

Would really Microsoft have missed that that program exists?
I trust it only work on Apple computers._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Thank you, russodle for the information. I am no expert. In my researching UEFI, I did encountered the rEFIt tool. The MAC-INTEL PC use the old EFI approach and not UEFI. There are differences between the two resulting in the EFI tools not working well. The problem may be in the digital signatures used by UEFI. The digital signatures seem to be controlled by Microsoft. The Electronic Foundation has been waiting on Microsoft to approve/grant the signature certificate that will allow multiple system booting. At this time, it appears to be awaiting game for things to be sorted end. I have one more idea that I am going to try to get information on it from HP before changing the hard drive with legacy boot._________________Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love Much

Yes but if they have hardware locked the boot sequence then
you most likely will not be able to boot that hardware ever again.
So you would need buy motherboards separate that are promised
to not have this locked BIOS.

think of all people that get a Laptop as a present and then
you tell them to blow away the windows and install linux on it.

that would brick that computer so you could not start it ever again
without maybe having a special Microsoft rescue CD that could
install a locked Win8 on it again.

Sure there are always exceptions but the parents that bought it
did not know their kids would get the suggestion to install linux on it._________________I use Google Search on Puppy Forum
not an ideal solution though

Thank you, russodle for the information. I am no expert. In my researching UEFI, I did encountered the rEFIt tool. The MAC-INTEL PC use the old EFI approach and not UEFI. There are differences between the two resulting in the EFI tools not working well. The problem may be in the digital signatures used by UEFI. The digital signatures seem to be controlled by Microsoft. The Electronic Foundation has been waiting on Microsoft to approve/grant the signature certificate that will allow multiple system booting. At this time, it appears to be awaiting game for things to be sorted end. I have one more idea that I am going to try to get information on it from HP before changing the hard drive with legacy boot.

Ah, you've obviously researched more comprehensively than i have, Greg.....that's a pity about the differences between EFI v UEFI.

Regarding the apparent control of digital signatures by M$, in my view they control far too much in the digital/computing arena. It's hard to imagine that their greed and lust for power would allow them to approve multiple system booting, but morally, i don't see how they could justify a negative stance on such an important issue (not that i think they have much in the way of moral standards!).

I hope you manage to get around this obstacle on your machine and would be interested to know how you progress..

I haven't used an M$ OS in nearly six years - oh BLISS - and my computing experience has never been happier!!

@ Burn_IT....i agree, there's no way i'll be investing in a new 'brick'! Custom-build would be the way to go, but i don't need a cutting-edge machine for daily doings anyway, Puppy comes to the party on my variety of old kit, including the Macs, just fine

@ nooby....hello
I doubt i know more about these things than you do at all..

Your point is a very valid one, judging by what i've read on this subject so far. The way i see it is that, if arbitrary, proprietary and (digital) power-mongering continues and the strangleholds tighten, then either we'll see

a world of mindless mouse-clickers doing what their PC (M$/Apple) allows them to, like sheep..

or

digital anarchy - don't forget, Linux is free and there are millions of developers and users worldwide these days....Android is out there too and the hardware is much cheaper (Google-control )

Hopefully users will not tolerate these escalating levels of greed and control, and the likes of M$ and Apple will experience the horror of revenue-loss for their sins (if they haven't begun to already..)

There'll be a 'Resistance', so cheer up, noob _________________This aging business really bugs me - it didn't bother me years ago, so why is it happening now??meownplanet - puppylinuxstuff

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, jamebond and kirk (both co-developers of FATDOG64). I was going to post that my next experiment with this Compaq and Windows 8, was to try FATDOG64 Puppy on it. I have been using FATDOG64 on my home machine (Acer Aspire) to get familiar with it.

I will download and try it. After the New Year Holiday, I will post a report. By the way, does it come with a "Signature"? This is needed. I can try with the "signature" to use BCDedit to register it with the UEFI BCD registry. I read your post. Yes, it has the file I see. Thanks!

The next experiment is to see how a Puppy Fugal installation and a live CDROM works on Windows 8 partition either with UEFI or using legacy. I am interested to see how Windows 8 reacts to a new file on its partition._________________Enjoy life, Just Greg
Live Well, Laugh Often, Love MuchEdited_time_total